As a leftist revolution in the national Democratic Party boils to the top of the front page of the Sunday New York Times, Democratic fortunes in Arkansas seem to sink deeper in the grave.
What's happening with Democrats nationally is dynamic. What besets Democrats in Arkansas is inertia. The gulf widens beneath an Arkansas Democrat's feet.
Arkansas and the national Democratic Party began the move toward separate-planet existences on or about 2010, sort of as Mars and Venus. Now they move toward a national Mercury and an Arkansas Pluto, the latter no longer even qualifying in the national Democratic context as a planet. Arkansas is now a mere Democratic "dwarf planet."
Here's the first and easiest example: Probably the best Democratic hopeful on the ballot this fall in Arkansas--2nd District congressional candidate Clarke Tucker--has been laden locally with the burden of association with the too-liberal Nancy Pelosi, as seen in Arkansas. He seeks to finesse that association by saying new leadership is needed throughout Washington. Meantime, a youth-driven insurgency in the national Democratic Party holds that Pelosi, rather than a liberal drag on an Arkansas Democrat, is too accommodating, insufficient of spine, too generationally reticent, too influenced by the aging remnants of Clinton centrism and the more recent ones of Obama consensus liberalism.
It sees Pelosi Democrats as unwilling to fight all-out for the real passions of national health insurance, a major spike in the minimum wage, the general "democratic socialism" that just netted a Democratic congressional primary upset in New York and--now--the abolition of Immigration and Customs Enforcement for an uncertain subsequent study of parceling its duties among other federal agencies.
In Democratic regions of the country, where there are many more voters than in Arkansas, this movement is vibrant and ultimately healthy despite its current system shock. It injects chronically finessed pragmatism with real ideology. It says the Democratic Party must stand unabashed for principle as the right wing of the Republican Party stood unabashed for principle. It holds that national Democrats must advocate boldly rather than accommodate tactically. It concludes that accommodation netted Democrats nothing but Republican control of Congress and a Republican madman in the White House.
The national Democratic Party is, for the foreseeable future, forfeiting the six electoral votes of Arkansas.
Local Republicans previously chortled that Barack Obama and Pelosi had done for them what they couldn't do on their own, which was build a Republican Party in Arkansas. Now they chortle that, if the Pelosi smear of local Democrats starts to fade, they can turn to the greater "socialism" smear.
Socialism is just a word, a description with incremental contexts, for folks born post-Berlin Wall. But it remains gummed up in Nikita Khrushchev, Leonid Brezhnev and stone-faced East German figure-skating judges for an older static population like Arkansas'.
Already, in Fayetteville, Republican state Rep. Charlie Collins, facing vigorous Democratic opposition from Denise Garner, tweets incessantly and gleefully about the out-of-touch democratic socialist emergence in the Democratic Party. He likes to say this movement would destroy vitally productive capitalist energy and reward the absence of personal responsibility.
That's not quite right. There are plenty of young people around the country engaging personally and successfully in raging capitalist pursuits while embracing simple public-policy opinions favoring Medicare for all, liberal immigration, social liberalism, higher minimum wages, stricter business regulation and free public college.
There simply aren't enough of those people currently in Arkansas to win more than a couple of legislative districts, a smattering of city council seats and the leadership of a few neighborhood associations.
Tucker seeks to move the Arkansas Democratic finesse away from the outdated and overwhelmingly rejected center-right themes of Mark Pryor and Mike Ross and toward something center-left. Rather than being a national Republican increment, he seeks to be a national Democratic increment.
Confronted with three Democratic primary opponents advocating single-payer government health insurance while he advocated fixing Obamacare, Tucker veered to endorse offering a Medicare-like option to everyone in the Obamacare exchanges. It was good enough for Democratic primary voters, who rewarded him with a victory by a rout. But it probably will be bad enough to drive Republican turnout in November in Saline, Faulkner and White counties.
Even should he be elected, he'd go to Congress without a natural caucus. He could join the socialist insurgents in voting against Pelosi's leadership, though for a different reason and except that he might not want to vote for their alternative.
The issue is whether national Democrats can still manage to compete by differing strategies in varied locales. Tucker's campaign was buoyed by moderate Conor Lamb's victory in suburban Pittsburgh. And Alabama elected a centrist Democratic senator, though perhaps only because Roy Moore was so thoroughly awful.
French Hill, the incumbent whom Tucker opposes, is no Roy Moore. He is but a common Trump sellout. And a common Trump sellout is what Pluto likes right now.
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John Brummett, whose column appears regularly in the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, is a member of the Arkansas Writers' Hall of Fame. Email him at [email protected]. Read his @johnbrummett Twitter feed.
Editorial on 07/24/2018